


Shed Light On Your Better Side

by orphan_account



Category: Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare, Shadowhunter Chronicles - All Media Types, Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-05
Updated: 2016-06-05
Packaged: 2018-07-12 11:30:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7101436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As it turns out there are things Jace can only say when he thinks Simon's asleep. Unfortunately for him Simon's newly acquired vampire hearing is very perceptive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shed Light On Your Better Side

**Author's Note:**

> What the hell did I just write?

It takes Simon a while to get used to his newly enhanced senses.

It's not just the hunger, it's _everything_. For weeks he flinches whenever someone touches him, it takes him minutes to get sounds of his head, he's sure his eyes are burning when he catches himself staring at the same spot for ten minutes without blinking, even though he knows that's impossible. His eyes don't burn anymore. 

It takes him hours, then days, then weeks to get used to it. It's excruciating and something thoughtless, something Clary hadn't even considered when she decided to bury Simon.  
But he overcomes. He works through it, he does. He has no other choice.

That doesn't mean he can completely stop himself from overhearing things, though.  
He winces at his own thoughts whenever he does, feeling like an intrusion, his entire person.

"I'm scared," says Alec to Magnus two rooms over and Magnus laughs, full of affection, and Simon knows he's falling in love and he squeezes his eyes shut and focuses on the clanging of sticks, Jace moving with dangerous, almost careless precision, Isabelle countering with sharp focus and fire behind her eyes.

"I don't know when I'll forgive you," says Clary and Jocelyn sighs.  
"I understand." But Simon doesn't think she does, because she wasn't here while Clary lost everything.

"This is a bad idea," says Lydia before she moves in to kiss Isabelle and there's something hoarse in Isabelle's response and Simon pulls back, he goes running, he runs and he won't ever have to stop.

"You are going to get better," says Luke across the room when he notices that Simon is lifting his hands up to his ears.  
"You'll be okay," says Clary, says Isabelle, says Raphael, says Jocelyn, says _Alec_ , fucking Alec, and Simon believes some of them some of the time.

And he gets better every day, he gains control and it feels good. But he'll always have to keep himself in check if he doesn't want to feel like a terrible person. 

It's harder when he goes to sleep. He doesn't need sleep, he doesn't do it when he's by himself, he notices time stretching and then snapping, seconds bleed into minutes, hours into seconds.

But when he gets to the Institute, when Jace is sitting in front of the monitors closest to the entrance pretending like he hasn't been waiting, when he gets to go into Jace's room and kick off his shoes, when he gets to listen to the sounds of other people moving through the adjoining rooms, just so distant that he doesn't feel lost, far enough to give him the illusion of being lost to the world, when Jace makes him feel like Simon takes up just enough space... On those nights, Simon closes his eyes and drifts off.

Vampire hearing is different, though. Even when Simon's sleeping it doesn't turn off.  
It's not actually a problem at first. Jace sleeps like a stone when he's not having nightmares, and he doesn't move around much, his arm a solid weight over Simon's waist most of the time. He wakes up relatively early, years of Shadowhunters conditioning will do that to you, and when he has to stay up because his thoughts won't rest he sits at the end of the bed. Those nights are hard for him, Simon knows, but even then he doesn't pace, doesn't explode, he reserves that for his fights, always for his fights. 

In general, though, they sleep together, and it's good, it's quiet, it's _peaceful_. It's something Simon would have never, not in a million years associated with Jace.

But then Jace starts saying things. Like, _saying_ things.

The first time it happens, Simon arrives at the Institute and is greeted by Clary and while he's still hugging her, he's reaching out with his senses, but Jace is not in the building.

Lydia comes in behind them. "He's out with Alec and Isabelle."  
Simon looks down at Clary and she smiles and leans her head on his shoulder.  
"You didn't go with?" he asks and smiles when she rolls her eyes.  
"The boss forbade it."

"I'm sorry, Clary," Lydia says and looks distinctly not sorry, "I just didn't think you were suited for this mission. Besides..." She picks at her sleeve and the corner of her mouth is twitching. "Now you no longer have an excuse not to go on your date."

Only then does Simon take in Clary's complete appearance. It used to be the first thing he did whenever she entered a room. She's halfway dressed up, her hair still in disarray and her feet bare, but the dress she's wearing feels smooth under Simon's hand where it's resting on her hip. 

"I wasn't looking for excuses," Clary argues, but it's in her eyes, the way they're shifting. Simon wisely doesn't respond and turns to Lydia instead, the amusement in her features so obvious it's painful.  
"When do you think they'll come back?" He could go back to the DuMort, or he could go visit mom and Rebecca, it's barely seven p.m..  
"They actually shouldn't take that long. They've been getting more and more effective lately."

Clary prods at Simon's shoulder with her nose. "Go wait in his room. I need to borrow Lydia for hair purposes."  
"Ah, yes, I'm no good with hair." He kisses the top of Clary's head, grins at Lydia. "Good luck with Maia. She's really cool, I promise."

*

He gets to Jace's room and crawls under the covers because it feels right, because he's been doing this for ten weeks and four days now. (Not that he's counting.) His eyes close automatically like they haven't since he opened them to suffocating silence, surrounded by the earth.  
Now he's surrounded by the smell of laundry detergent and something that is starting to feel suspiciously familiar.

He falls asleep before he knows it, as comfortable as he gets, half-listening to Clary leaving the Institute and Lydia getting back to work, her voice meshing with Raj's. He wonders if Alec has his bow raised right now, if Isabelle's jumping off a ledge to land on her feet - Simon doubts she even knows what a twisted ankle feels like - and if Jace is dancing through the air, his blade glinting in the dark, his eyes burning. 

Simon never likes the seed in his stomach breaking open and blooming whenever he thinks of the sharp edge of Valentine's sword against Jace's throat, or demons crumbling, folding together, leaving Jace panting beneath a layer of smoke and dust. So Simon clenches his jaw and thinks about his own teeth against Jace's throat instead. 

He drifts off before any of the others come back.

His ears pick the creaking of the door one hour later up immediately, though. Jace's soundless rune must still be at work, because Simon can't make out his steps. Or, Simon thinks, he applied a new one because Lydia told him Simon was here. His heart jolts. He keeps his eyes shut.

It takes approximately ten minutes for Jace to clean himself up before he slides into bed and Simon feels his heat.  
"Hi," Jace says and it sounds hoarse and Simon is starting to open his mouth when Jace continues without missing a beat. "I'm sorry I'm late."

"You're fast asleep, huh? That's a shame." Simon expects an innuendo. "I like falling asleep with you." Not like that. The mattress dips when Jace slides down, fingers spreading out over Simon's back. Simon barely suppresses a shiver.

"The hunt was pretty fun, though," Jace continues, breathing onto Simon's neck. "Izzy almost got ambushed, but she got quicker since she started training with Lydia." He sighs and his hand is wandering, until his fingers brush Simon's hairline.  
"Sometimes I wonder if it's my fault, you know?" It takes vampiric perception of time for Simon to stop himself from tensing up, from asking. _What?_

"I came to the Lightwoods and they accepted me and there was Alec and he trained with me - He and I, we shared something, we became _parabatai_. And not once did I think about what I might have taken away from Izzy. She never had a sparring partner since I claimed Alec until Lydia and Clary came along. If I hadn't been there..." He pauses, his entire body coming to a stop. "Who knows how good she'd be right now. How happy." 

Simon desperately, desperately wants to say something, wants to refute.  
"I never asked her, of course. Never told anyone." He scoffs and it sounds shaky. "I'm that selfish."

Really, really desperately.

"Good night, Simon," Jace whispers, nuzzles Simon's shoulder and Simon closes his mouth.

*

It doesn't stop there.  
Before that night Simon hadn't even noticed how consistent Jace had been in waiting for him, always there when Simon had arrived at the Institute. It makes his stomach flutter when he thinks about it.

After that first night, though, Simon comes more irregularly, feeling like he has a free pass to Jace's room now, becoming more secure in the fact that Jace hasn't thrown him out once yet.

He falls asleep there more, too. Not because the Institute is boring. (Simon is pretty sure that he will never get bored, surrounded by this whole other _world_.) It's more of a thing of familarity, the people in his life shifting to this location with a place for him, that wasn't officially _his_ from the start.

Sometimes he stays until after the sun rises, revelling in the quiet triumph of making Jace chuckle when he faux-complains about being chained up here for the rest of the day.

So when Simon sleeps, Jace comes in more often than not. And when Simon sleeps, Jace starts talking.

"I'm constantly afraid I'm going to hurt someone," he says the second time it happens. "I like that you're strong enough to defend yourself against me."  
"Valentine was my age when he turned into a monster," comes after that. "I can see myself following his path."

He says, "I enjoy killing too much."  
He says, "I still love Maryse and Robert."  
He says, "I will never forgive Maryse and Robert."  
He says, "I wish this world didn't exist. I wish I could have met you under different circumstances."  
He says, "I don't know if I can ever tell you that I love you." He pauses. "You know. To your face. While you're awake."

Then he says, "If I hadn't hung up the phone for Clary you wouldn't have died."  
And, "Izzy's grown so much, she's going to move on from us soon."  
And, "Do you think Clary would still accept me as her brother?"  
And, "I don't like the way this Jordan kid is looking at Clary and Maia."

And, "I love you."  
"I love you."  
"I love you."

Simon doesn't answer him once.

*

It's beginning to really bug him.

Jace isn't really telling _him_ these things. This is stuff that he needs to get off his chest, and he chooses to talk to a sleeping person. He might as well be praying. He's confessing. 

The more he does it the wronger it feels.

He doesn't talk to anyone about it either, he doesn't want to reveal any of the things Jace opened up to him about.  
He needs to talk to Jace about it, though. If not for fairness, then for the chance to tell Jace how _wrong_ all of it is. Because he has started to dread the times Jace starts talking. It makes him ache, the way Jace articulates his thoughts while raking his hands through Simon's hair, running them down his back, kneading his knuckles into his thigh.

Jace's eyes burn into him from across the table and Simon's heart skips a beat.

*

Simon turns around when the door clicks shut.

"You're awake," Jace says, sounding mildly surprised. Simon swallows while Jace takes off his shirt and rolls onto the bed. His insides are churning and something in him is resisting him.  
"I need to talk to you," he blurts out and exhales sharply out of relief and apprehension. He can feel Jace tense up next to him and reaches out out of instinct, placing his hand on Jace's thigh.

Jace is looking at him intently, obviously trying to think of something he did to warrant this kind of tone from Simon.  
"Um," Simon says and has no idea how to continue. "Before I say anything, though, I need you to know that I'm really, really sorry. Like, advanced levels of sorry. And, ah, I'll try so much harder. I'll just have to learn how to-"  
"Simon." Jace's brow is furrowed and it immediately makes Simon feel like shit, his stomach hanging somewhere between his knees. "Just tell me. What did you do?"

Simon says, "I-" and then, "uh," and, "I-" and Jace is looking increasingly worried and so _open_ and Simon snaps.  
"I hear you," he says, pulling his hand away from Jace's leg. "When, when you think I'm asleep and you... you start talking to me, my asleep self, I listen to you because my hearing is like supernaturally good and you wake me up even if you don't mean to and I'm really, really _sorry_." 

He can't look away, because this is all his fault and because the emotions flittering over Jace's face are overwhelming before he shuts down. Two, three, four breathless seconds pass and Simon is afraid one of the muscles in Jace's cheeks is going to snap. He opens his mouth again before he can think better of it.

"I am so, so sorry," he whispers, as if that is going to make anything better. He keeps his eyes fixed on the point above Jace's nose, the one not quite between his eyebrows, while Jace averts his eyes and takes another four, five, six seconds before he sits up and swings his legs out of the bed, his back turned to Simon.

"So, I guess this is over." He says it quietly, evenly, his hands bracing themselves against the edge of the bed, but Simon hears him, of course he does, his ears won't allow for anything else.  
Inside his chest something starts to burn, from the inside out, but his legs go numb. "What?"

Up until that moment, he realizes, he hadn't thought that Jace would break up with him over this. He hadn't thought that this would be what it took. But why wouldn't it be? Simon catches himself breathing in unnecessarily.  
"If that's what you want."

"What _I_ want?" Jace shoots up from the bed and turns, his fingers curled inward, knuckles white. The look in his eyes burns down to Simon's core, but there is something off about the fury in it. "You heard everything?" he asks.

Simon nods.

"Everything," Jace repeats as if it's something unbeliveable. "Then why did you keep it up? So you could collect as much dirt on me as possible before you broke up with me?" And oh.

Sometimes Simon thinks he's so clever.  
Sometimes he thinks it's so obvious what people feel, who they are, because everyone shows their true self at least some of the time.  
Sometimes he is convinced beyond a doubt that he has people figured out. 

At any given time Simon is a fucking idiot.

"What?" he asks and is so baffled that it comes out high pitched and pathetic. "Jace, what the hell are you talking about?"

"That's why you're telling me now, isn't it? Because you heard everything."

A dense, big-headed fucking _idiot_. 

"I don't want to break up with you." And then, because his voice is still panicked and suffering under his emotional whiplash, he adds, "Can you please come back here?"

Jace sits down on his blanket, keeping the distance between Simon and him to a maximum.  
"This is my fault, I know that, I invaded your privacy when you thought you could talk safely and I understand if _you_ want to break it off with _me_ over that."  
"That's ridiculous," Jace says flatly. "It's not your fault. You have enhanced senses, Simon, and they're not controlled by runes, you can only keep them in check that much."

"Even if we go with that, though, I still should have told you. The first time it happened I should have told you."  
Jace crosses his arms and rests them on his knees. The vulnerability of the gesture makes Simon's heart hurt. "So, why didn't you?"

"The first time? I don't know. I was so caught off guard and I didn't think it would happen again, but then it did and I just, I didn't know how to tell you. Jace, the things you said..."  
"Yeah." He looks shattered. Simon doesn't think there's another soul on the planet that has ever gotten to hear these things.  
"I still shouldn't have done it. I didn't want to confront you about it because I was scared that your reaction would be, well, on this level of terrible, and I fucked it up and I'm sorry."

"Simon," Jace says and there is so much restraint in it, so much he isn't saying, "I understand, it's fine, stop apologizing." 

Simon leans back. "This is so not how I thought this would go." He had expected yelling and stomping away to go punch something. This kind of... defeat he hadn't seen coming at all.  
Jace breathes out through his nose. 

"Why didn't you leave?" he asks, and asks it like it's a question more to himself. Simon wants to scoot closer. Badly. But he doesn't.

"You have no idea how much I wanted to turn around every time." He says it and Jace's shoulders slump just the slightest bit. "Every time I wanted to tell you that it's going to be okay and I wanted to ask what I could do to help."

"Jace," Simon says and stretches out his arm, only to let it fall on the blanket halfway to Jace's legs, "you are _good_. I know it and Clary knows it and Alec, Izzy and Lydia, they know it and you should trust us, we know what we're talking about." 

And then there is something shifting in his brain, gears clicking. He says the thing he never granted himself to say.  
"Just because you're struggling with bad, that doesn't mean you're not good." 

And he moves forward to lie on his back, looking up at Jace, but not touching him at all, not yet. Jace's eyes are clear, like they always are, except for that one split second before he's fully awake, but his breathing is ragged, like it never is when he's fighting. 

"I don't think I will ever tell you these things to your face," he says and Simon smiles, inappropriately and unwisely.  
"I'm really good at pretending not to listen." He closes his eyes for a beat when Jace's fingers find their way into his hair. "You know what I'm also really good at?"

Jace half-smiles, putting himself back together, he's practiced at that.

"Patting yourself on the back?"  
"No," Simon disagrees as cheerfully as he can. He is practiced at _that_. "I'm really good at hugs, watch." His arms come up at normal speed, so he can know that Jace is letting him do this, and he pulls himself up on Jace's neck, before he rearranges his limbs to turn around and climb into Jace's lap. 

When Jace buries his face in Simon's neck, there is a shuttering exhale that makes Simon squeeze his eyes shut and hold on tight. 

Later he's going to tell Jace, that he doesn't have to tell Simon everything for Simon to reassure him.  
Later he's going to tell him, that everything is going to be okay.  
Later he's going to tell him, that he loves him, too.  
Later he's going to tell him, that Jace won't ever have to tell him that he loves him, because he shows him every day and anyways, Simon already knows.


End file.
